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When Batman made a packet at the box office in 1989, you didn't have to be a genius to realise a sequel wouldn't be far behind.

Released in the summer of 1992, Batman Returns was up against a host of other sequels - Lethal Weapon 3, Alien 3 and the big budget Far and Away with Tom Cruise.

While those movies were modest hits, they lacked a certain something: Freshness, guts and something different from the usual Hollywood summer blockbuster.

Tim Burton, visionary director of the earlier Batman, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, had earned enough kudos in Tinseltown by that point to call the shots and was delighted when Warner Bros suits gave him carte blanche to make the movie he wanted.

What he delivered is perhaps the darkest, most bizarre movie ever to be labelled a summer blockbuster and eight years after the event, it still may look like Hollywood popcorn: light, airy, attractive but far it tastes far more bitter than the usual multiplex confection.

Michael Keaton - still the best Batman by miles - is back as both billionaire Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego, the shadowy Dark Knight detective. This time he tackles both Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and The Penguin (Danny DeVito) in a film which even Tim Burton described as "having no story". Well what do you expect from a movie inspired by a comic - Shakespeare?

Let's face it, when you've got Keaton stalking the shadowy streets of Gotham City (take a bow production designer Bo Welch); Michelle Pfeiffer in a skin-tight outfit more akin to a late night Channel 5 movie and the outstanding Christopher Walken as mad industrialist Max Shreck, who cares about the plot?

Burton's tale is a bizarre take on the Moses story in which deformed baby Oswald Cobblepot is thrown into Gotham River by his parents and washed into the sewers where a family of penguins raise him as one of their own.

Fast forward thirty odd years and lowly secretary Selina Kyle discovers her boss, Max Schreck, is cooking the books in a grand fashion. He reacts in a gloriously dynamic fashion: By throwing her out of the window.

Resurrected by cats - one of the most unusual scenes in any motion picture - but suffering from a sever case of schizophrenia, Kyle soon transforms an old coat into a costume that would make any red-blooded bloke forget their own name.

Catwoman is born and she's the polar opposite of her meek and mild alter-ego.

So the Cat and the Penguin join forces to take on the Bat and the ensuing clash is liberally laced with explosions and obligatory fight scenes.

There's the usual toys to keep the gadget fans happy, including a programmable Batarang, a Batmobile which falls apart on command and turns into a torpedo, not to mention a ski boat, ideal for zipping around Gotham's sewers.

While such gizmos look very cool, they pale into insignificance compared to the sight of an army of brain-washed penguins, all carrying rockets, converging on Gotham city.

A glorious Danny Elfman score gives this grand guignol tale its proper atmosphere, there's a fine track by Siouxsie and the Banshees at a rather clever party, and the casting is top drawer.

Full marks also go to editor Chris Lebenzon, one of the best action 'cutters' in Tinseltown who turned Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State and Burton's latest, Sleepy Hollow, into such nail-biting gems.

Although the suits - and the fast food chains who plugged the movie - weren't over the moon by the dark and twisted result, Batman Returns still made $282million worldwide - enough cash to warrant a couple of sequels. Needless to say, they were far more family oriented, if not as memorable.

With the series now making way for another big budget comic adaptation, The X Men and Burton hard at work on a Planet of the Apes remake, it's unlikely that we'll see DC comics' 61-year-old hero depicted in quite this way again.

More's the pity.